Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (7 page)

I did not care for my younger aunt’s
hysterical reaction concerning my capabilities. “’Horrors’?” I
echoed with disdain. “If you’re talking about what’s in the wine
cellar, we are old friends. Or are you speaking of the entity
sharing coffin-space with great-great-granduncle Leander? It
behaves nicely when it’s not hungry and I have been punctilious
about feeding it with all due caution. If you’ve heard any
complaints from the village, do not rush to judgment. Sheep and
children go missing for all sorts of reasons. I
know
you are
not referring to dear Scylla, down at the gatekeeper’s cottage.
Poor thing, her mind wanders so badly these days that on my daily
visits it is all I can do to remind her I am her former nursling
and not her noontide refreshment.”

I turned to Miss Cubbins, who had gone a
peculiar tint of ashy grey. “Wha—wha—what are you saying, Miss
Melantha?” she stammered, trembling.

“Never mind her,” Aunt Domitilla said
crisply. “
She
is thirteen and omniscient. But I repeat
myself. Let us rather repair to the site of your transgression,
Miss Cubbins, that you may behold the results of an ill-considered
excess of emotion when confronted by a simple grasshopper. We shall
then observe how well our niece deals with the results. I trust it
will be most enlightening, at the proper distance.”

With that she renewed her hold upon my
erstwhile governess’ arm and plowed onward.

There was not much farther to plow before our
small group reached the grassy banks of that spring whose continued
purity was of such moment to my aunts. I knew the place very well.
My earliest memories were of summer afternoons spent lolling on the
greensward while Pappa stood with arms outstretched over the
waters, chanting words I neither knew nor had any interest in
knowing. The glimmering mist that arose from the center of the pool
on those occasions was a lovely shade of bronze, interspersed with
flickers of crimson. After Pappa concluded the formalities, we
would share a feast of treacle tart and tea, taking every
precaution that not one crumb touched the water, though again I was
ignorant of the reason and disinterested in learning it. Sometimes
he would cut a few of the reeds that bordered the eternally flowing
source in order to amuse me by creating a shepherd’s pipe upon
which he played many a jocund tune. (Dear heavens, what awful,
awful
music!)

I remembered the spring and the pool. I
remembered the verdant banks and the nodding reeds.

I did not remember the willow trees that grew
so tall they veiled the sun from sight, nor the fluffy-bolled
cotton plants choking the edges of the water, nor—most clearly of
all—the naked man. I am quite certain of that. My aunts might call
me a scatterbrained hoyden when so disposed, but even so, the
presence of a completely bare-bodied stranger has a tendency to
stick in one’s memory.

“Hello?” he ventured. Miss Cubbins took one
look, shrieked, and keeled over insensible. “What’s wrong with
her?” the nude gentleman asked. He stood knee-deep in the water,
strands of long, black hair clinging to his finely shaped head and
lean, muscular chest and shoulders. His eyes were a delectable
shade of green, reminiscent of the verdant carapace of—of—

My inability to pinpoint the answer tormented
me until Aunt Domitilla inquired primly, “Sir, are you now or have
you ever been a grasshopper?” and I was much relieved in my
mind.

The handsome youth frowned. “Who
are
you, woman?” He turned his head left and right. “Where am I,
anyway? This doesn’t look like the mansions of Olympos or the plain
of Ilion.”

“I should hope not,” I interjected. “It is
England’s green and, so we are frequently assured, pleasant land.”
This answer only succeeded in deepening the wrinkles of perplexity
marring the smooth perfection of his brow. I endeavored to amend
his puzzlement by adding: “You are in Albion, not Ilion, dear sir,
an isle in the northwestern ocean well beyond the Pillars of
Hercules. It would be my pleasure to provide details, but first,
would you care for tea or some trousers?”

He scratched his head. “Never heard of
either, but I’m willing to eat anything once.”

Aunt Domitilla glared. “Wicked child, is this
how you confront incipient disaster? By offering it tea?”

“Tea and trousers,” I pointed out. “He
clearly stands in need of both. But pray, what disaster is this?
You cannot mean it is beyond your capability to thwart! Dear aunt,
I have seen you hold off entire gaggles of gargoyles with a single
knitting needle. Imps and cacodemons doff their caps in your
presence. One word from you caused the succubus troubling our
butler’s son to leave off her vile nocturnal activities and obtain
employment at the local workhouse. By the way, you have yet to
explain the details of those rather boisterous night-time
tomfooleries of hers to me, and you
promised
.”

“Do not confuse matters of family
religion
with matters of family
trust
, Melantha,”
Aunt Domitilla said stiffly. “I assure you that the person
presently dripping before us embodies a great threat to the
latter.”

“But
how
?” I insisted. “It is plain
that the poor fellow can not possibly be carrying any concealed
weaponry.”

My elder aunt rolled her eyes. Turning to our
newly arrived guest, she asked, “Young man, as you were recently a
grasshopper, have I now the pleasure of addressing one Prince
Tithonus, son of King Laomedon of Troy?”

“That’s me, all right.”

“Further, were you previously the paramour of
Eos, goddess of the dawn?”

A lascivious grin spread slowly across
Tithonus’ finely chiseled features. “
I’ll
say. And if she’d
been as on top of things in the brain department as she was in the
bedroom, I’d still be the first thing up in the morning.”

“
Mister
Tithonus! Language!” Aunt
Euphrosyne left off chafing Miss Cubbins’ wrists in a vain attempt
at returning the governess to consciousness and jerked her head up,
scandalized. “I will thank you to note that there is a
child
present.”

“Who, her?” He winked at me. “Pretty little
poppet. Give us a kiss.”

Aunt Domitilla pursed her lips. “I believe I
liked you better as a grasshopper.”

“You never met me as a grasshopper.”

“Nonetheless.”

It was at this juncture that Aunt
Euprhosyne’s attentions succeeded in reviving Miss Cubbins. My
former governess sat up and looked around groggily. “The naked
gentleman is still among us,” she observed. “I believe I shall
swoon again, on that account.”

“You will swoon when and if I require it of
you” Aunt Domitilla snapped. “In any case, you will not do so until
you have acknowledged the effects of your hysterical reaction to
what was a formerly harmless insect.” She indicated Tithonus.

Miss Cubbins blinked. “You call that an
insect?”

“Hello, darling,” Tithonus said cheerfully.
“Don’t tell me
you’re
a child, too?”

Before Miss Cubbins could give a suitably
indignant answer, Aunt Euphrosyne spoke up: “You mustn’t mind
Prince Tithonus, Miss Cubbins. We had no idea he was upon the manor
grounds or we would have forewarned Melantha against using any
vermin matching his description as part of her pranks.”

“Who are you calling vermin?” Tithonus cried.
“I didn’t
ask
to become a grasshopper. I
wanted
immortality. Is it my fault that silly bitch—?”

“Mister Tithonus!
Must
you?”

“—that silly
biddy
Eos forgot to beg
me the gift of eternal youth as well as eternal life? Do you know
how awful it is to live on and on and on, trapped in a body that
can’t die but keeps on aging?”

“I can almost imagine it,” Aunt Domitilla
said dryly.

“Well, it
stinks
!” Tithonus stamped
his foot, sending a splash of water flying out of the spring. My
aunts gave a small backward jump, no doubt to preserve their
raiment from haphazard dampening. “You wrinkle and you weaken and
you tell the same boring stories over and over and you start to
smell funny and then you get so dried up and shrunken and tiny that
someone
gets the bright idea to turn you into a grasshopper
because you’re nine-sevenths of the way there already!”

“I beg your pardon, but nine-sevenths is an
improper fraction,” Miss Cubbins pointed out in her punctilious
fashion.

“There are
improper
fractions?” My
ears perked up. Perhaps I had been too hasty in objecting to the
subject.

“Melantha, there is a time for mathematics
and a time for moral improvement,” Aunt Domitilla decreed. “Learn
to distinguish between them.”

“And after all that—” Tithonus went on.
“—after so much suffering and humiliation, what do you think Eos
does? She drops me! Acts like I never existed! Tosses me out of her
celestial mansion and onto
this
godsforsaken dab of dirt.
You’d think the trollop would at least shelve me somewhere with a
decent climate, but this place—?” He made a rude noise.

“Perhaps you will find England’s weather less
objectionable once you have spent time here in your restored form,”
Aunt Euphrosyne offered. Ever the conciliator, she added: “We will
happily offer you the hospitality of Dyrnewaed until you have
become acclimatized to your renewed humanity.”

“Are you not forgetting something,
Euphrosyne?” Aunt Domitilla asked with a lift of one eyebrow. “The
doors of Dyrnewaed are not ours to open, as Melantha has so
kindly
pointed out.”

“Dearest auntie, please don’t be such a
sourpuss.” I slipped my arm through hers and gazed into her face in
a most beguiling manner. “I didn’t mean any of those naughty words.
You
must
stay on. I would be lost without your
guidance.”

“We shall all be lost, soon enough,” Aunt
Domitilla replied in dark, foreboding tones. “Look around, girl!
Use what portion of your brain was our late sister’s bequest to
you! Do you notice
nothing
besides the unclothed prince
before us?”

“Of course I notice more than that!” I
replied crisply. “I see those trees and those cotton plants. I
would have to be blind to ignore them.”

“And is that your limit? Have you only
thought, ‘Ah, trees and plants have sprung up unbidden and at full
maturity. What a merry lark!’ and never once asked yourself
‘
How
did that happen?’”

“My basket. . .” Miss Cubbins stared at the
willows. “My basket was woven of osier wands, and my embroidery—it
was pure cotton in both cloth and floss. When it landed in this
pool, do you mean to say that it and all contained therein
became—?”

“As once they were, yes,” Aunt Euphrosyne
said gently. “This spring encompasses the power of restoration for
those living things which were transformed against their desires. A
touch of its waters returns them to what they were and what they
long to be again.”

“Embroidery floss has
longings
?” Miss
Cubbins looked ready to dash off at any moment and beg admittance
to Bedlam.

“If it did not, the waters would have no
effect upon it,” my younger aunt said in her soft, unprepossessing
voice. “
Quod erat demonstrandum
.” She indicated the gently
nodding cotton bolls.

“Good thing you weren’t carrying lunch in
that basket, eh, girl?” Tithonus chuckled.

The governess clasped the cameo brooch at her
stiffly starched collar. At first I thought she was distressed at
the thought of a ham sandwich suddenly regenerating itself into a
wheat field and a living pig or portions thereof, but her thoughts
tended elsewhere: “Merciful heavens, the tales of this accursed
house and misbegotten family are true: You are witches!”

“How
dare
you, you ignorant minx!”
Aunt Domitilla exclaimed. “Witches, are we? By the eternally
nibbled liver of Prometheus, it is a blessing that circumstance has
removed you from your post before you had the opportunity to infect
our precious niece with such thick-witted drivel.”

“If only we
were
witches,” Aunt
Euphrosyne said with a heartfelt sigh. “Things would be so much
easier. At best we might expect a steady income from the sale of
love philters and potions for gentlemanly enhancement, and at worst
a burning at the stake.”

“We are
custodians
,” Aunt Domitilla
said. “The spring and many other features of Dyrnewaed’s grounds
have powers that attract the attention of otherworldly beings—we
can attest to that. We have accepted the responsibility for keeping
watch and ward here, with great help from the centuries’-long
enchantments shielding this place from the
direct
view of
supernatural creatures. Without such spells we would have been
overrun ages ago.”

“But where’s the harm, auntie?” I asked in
all innocence. “If a creature wishes to use our spring to revert to
its original form, why don’t we permit it? One splash and
done!”

“Dear Melantha, you are too young to realize
that it would not end with that initial splash,” Aunt Euphrosyne
chided me gently. “Most metamorphoses should on no account be
reversed, for they encompass generations. What dreadful impact it
would have upon the population of this island if Arachne managed to
dip one pedipalp into this pool! She would not be the only one
affected. Every spider of her bloodline would become a young woman
with overweening pride in her talent as a weaver. Most of them
might find employment in the mills of Manchester, but the rest
would be a burden on society.”

While this exchange continued, Tithonus
sloshed to the edge of the spring and stepped out onto dry land.
“My toes look like oil-cured olives,” he muttered. “And I’m still
hungry. Hey! One of you women stop yapping and bring me bread,
wine, oil, and a nice collop of roast lamb!”